Author
Topic: 'Deadly' - homonymous or polysemous? (Read 4285 times)

Duck (noun/verb) comes from two different sources. The assumed connection is merely a folk etymology. But obviously, like aver/have, the meaning is related but not in any sense "the same" because the parts of speech differ. Same with straight!

My impression was that the name for the animal was older and that the action was not named after it. Perhaps that was the folk etymology, where in reality the animal was named after the action centuries earlier. But at best that's a confusing example of 'folk etymology' because there's still some truth to it if this is correct.

The original term was "duck tape", which was later thought to be "duct tape" because of its usage. Given that /dUk/ is the pronunciation either way (in normal fast speech) this is sort of a coincidental homophony with the same meaning...

(I've done some searching online to mind for discussion of this as folk etymology and didn't come across anything. I do remember reading or hearing this somewhere, but it looks like the original source was wrong about it.)